Section 538

I took a tumble heading down to the floor earlier this evening and aggravated an already injured foot. Lucky for me, there was a doctor in the house, actually in the delegation: Dr. Spencer Epps, who tended my foot so I was able to stay with the delegation, though I didn't do much jumping up and down.
All around the stadium, people were cheering and waving flags. A guy up at the top of section 538, in the nosebleed seats, was waving a large American flag throughout the evening.
Al Gore was scathing in his criticism of the GOP's reluctance to act on, or even acknowledge, climate change:

We already have everything we need to use the sun, the wind, geothermal power, conservation and efficiency to solve the climate crisis – everything, that is, except a president who inspires us to believe, “Yes we can.” So how did this no-brainer become a brain-twister? Because the carbon fuels industry – big oil and coal – have a 50-year lease on the Republican Party and they are drilling it for everything it's worth.

Barack Obama did everything the pundits said he needed to do in his acceptance speech, including tying John McCain to George Bush:

Senator McCain likes to talk about judgment, but, really, what does it say about your judgment when you think George Bush has been right more than 90 percent of the time? I don't know about you, but I am not ready to take a 10 percent chance on change.

Obama directly challenged McCain's ongoing effort to paint him as a celebrity by pointing to the challenges he and his family have overcome. He challenged McCain directly on foreign policy:

If John McCain wants to have a debate about who has the temperament and judgment to serve as the next commander-in-chief, that's a debate I'm ready to have.

After enumerating his differences on national security with McCain, he sought to claim the high ground on the tone of the campaign:

But what I will not do is suggest that the senator takes his positions for political purposes, because one of the things that we have to change in our politics is the idea that people cannot disagree without challenging each other's character and each other's patriotism. The times are too serious, the stakes are too high for this same partisan playbook.
So let us agree that patriotism has no party. I love this country, and so do you, and so does John McCain.
The men and women who serve in our battlefields may be Democrats and Republicans and independents, but they have fought together, and bled together, and some died together under the same proud flag. They have not served a red America or a blue America; they have served the United States of America.
So I've got news for you, John McCain: We all put our country first.

Obama understands that you don't get to be president by talking down our country's future:

America, we cannot turn back. We cannot walk alone. At this moment, in this election, we must pledge once more to march into the future. Let us keep that promise, that American promise, and in the words of scripture hold firmly, without wavering, to the hope that we confess. Thank you. God bless you. And God bless the United States of America.

Afterwards, I couldn't quite march, but instead hobbled into the night.